This book addresses popular and academic concerns that the institution of work is being irreparably damaged by digital/media technologies. The book considers three specific concerns (each in a ...
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This book addresses popular and academic concerns that the institution of work is being irreparably damaged by digital/media technologies. The book considers three specific concerns (each in a separate chapter): 1) that all jobs may soon be automated out of existence, 2) that the sharing economy will degrade the few jobs that remain, and 3) that services like Facebook and Instagram are turning leisure into work, exploiting users in their so-called free time. Through an in-depth examination of these concerns, the book proposes that what really concerns these writers is not that work is being degraded or may soon disappear altogether, but rather that society itself is under attack, and more specifically the bonds of responsibility on which social relations depend. Drawing from recent work on affect/emotion and from the controversial antisocial thesis in queer theory, the book argues that the anxiety surrounding these transformations aims primarily not to slow or reverse these changes, but rather to solicit readers to identify with the social: to stop being irresponsible, unaccountable, lazy, self-serving, and hedonistic, and to once again engage in the hard work of being a productive member of society.Less

Antisocial Media : Anxious Labor in the Digital Economy

Greg Goldberg

Published in print: 2018-01-16

This book addresses popular and academic concerns that the institution of work is being irreparably damaged by digital/media technologies. The book considers three specific concerns (each in a separate chapter): 1) that all jobs may soon be automated out of existence, 2) that the sharing economy will degrade the few jobs that remain, and 3) that services like Facebook and Instagram are turning leisure into work, exploiting users in their so-called free time. Through an in-depth examination of these concerns, the book proposes that what really concerns these writers is not that work is being degraded or may soon disappear altogether, but rather that society itself is under attack, and more specifically the bonds of responsibility on which social relations depend. Drawing from recent work on affect/emotion and from the controversial antisocial thesis in queer theory, the book argues that the anxiety surrounding these transformations aims primarily not to slow or reverse these changes, but rather to solicit readers to identify with the social: to stop being irresponsible, unaccountable, lazy, self-serving, and hedonistic, and to once again engage in the hard work of being a productive member of society.

In an increasingly globalized world, place matters more than ever. That is certainly the case in Appalachian studies—a field that brings scholars, activists, artists, and citizens together around a ...
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In an increasingly globalized world, place matters more than ever. That is certainly the case in Appalachian studies—a field that brings scholars, activists, artists, and citizens together around a region to contest misappropriations of resources and power and combat stereotypes of isolation and intolerance. In Appalachia in Regional Context: Place Matters, the diverse ways in which place is invoked, the person who invokes it, and the reasons behind that invocation all matter greatly. In this collection, scholars and artists are assembled from a variety of disciplines to broaden the conversation. The book begins with chapters challenging conventional representations of Appalachia by exploring theoretically the relationships among regionalism, globalism, activism, and everyday experience. Other chapters examine, for example, foodways, depictions of Appalachian gendered and racialized identity in popular culture, the experiences of rural LGBTQ youth, and the pitfalls and promises of teaching regional studies. Poems by the renowned social critic bell hooks interleave the chapters and add context to reflections on the region. Drawing on cultural anthropology, sociology, geography, media studies, political science, gender and women’s studies, ethnography, social theory, art, music, and literature, this volume furthers the exploration of new perspectives on one of America’s most compelling and misunderstood regions.Less

Appalachia in Regional Context : Place Matters

Published in print: 2018-01-25

In an increasingly globalized world, place matters more than ever. That is certainly the case in Appalachian studies—a field that brings scholars, activists, artists, and citizens together around a region to contest misappropriations of resources and power and combat stereotypes of isolation and intolerance. In Appalachia in Regional Context: Place Matters, the diverse ways in which place is invoked, the person who invokes it, and the reasons behind that invocation all matter greatly. In this collection, scholars and artists are assembled from a variety of disciplines to broaden the conversation. The book begins with chapters challenging conventional representations of Appalachia by exploring theoretically the relationships among regionalism, globalism, activism, and everyday experience. Other chapters examine, for example, foodways, depictions of Appalachian gendered and racialized identity in popular culture, the experiences of rural LGBTQ youth, and the pitfalls and promises of teaching regional studies. Poems by the renowned social critic bell hooks interleave the chapters and add context to reflections on the region. Drawing on cultural anthropology, sociology, geography, media studies, political science, gender and women’s studies, ethnography, social theory, art, music, and literature, this volume furthers the exploration of new perspectives on one of America’s most compelling and misunderstood regions.

How should we think about authorship, use and piracy in an era of media convergence? How does the growing focus on amateur creativity impact on existing legal and cultural understandings of around ...
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How should we think about authorship, use and piracy in an era of media convergence? How does the growing focus on amateur creativity impact on existing legal and cultural understandings of around creation? And why are the author, user and pirate so prominent in debates around copyright law? Authors, Users, Pirates: Copyright Law and Subjectivity presents a new way of thinking about these three central subjects of copyright. It outlines a relational approach to subjectivity, charting connections between the author, user and pirate through a series of historical and contemporary case studies, moving from early regulatory debates around radio spectrum and nineteenth century cases on book abridgments to the controversial reuse of Instagram photos and the emergence of multi-channel networks on YouTube. The book draws on legal scholarship, cultural theory and media studies research to provide a new way of thinking about subjectivity and copyright. It also offers insights into a range of critical issues that sit at the intersection of copyright law and digital media including online copyright infringement, amateur media production and the potential futures of creative industries.Less

Authors, Users, and Pirates : Copyright Law and Subjectivity

James Meese

Published in print: 2018-02-16

How should we think about authorship, use and piracy in an era of media convergence? How does the growing focus on amateur creativity impact on existing legal and cultural understandings of around creation? And why are the author, user and pirate so prominent in debates around copyright law? Authors, Users, Pirates: Copyright Law and Subjectivity presents a new way of thinking about these three central subjects of copyright. It outlines a relational approach to subjectivity, charting connections between the author, user and pirate through a series of historical and contemporary case studies, moving from early regulatory debates around radio spectrum and nineteenth century cases on book abridgments to the controversial reuse of Instagram photos and the emergence of multi-channel networks on YouTube. The book draws on legal scholarship, cultural theory and media studies research to provide a new way of thinking about subjectivity and copyright. It also offers insights into a range of critical issues that sit at the intersection of copyright law and digital media including online copyright infringement, amateur media production and the potential futures of creative industries.

Being Together in Place explores the landscapes that convene Native and non-Native people into sustained and difficult negotiations over their radically different interests. Using ethnographic ...
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Being Together in Place explores the landscapes that convene Native and non-Native people into sustained and difficult negotiations over their radically different interests. Using ethnographic research and a geographic perspective, this book shows activists in three sites learning how to articulate and defend their intrinsic and life-supportive ways of being—particularly to those who are intent on damaging these places.Less

Being Together in Place : Indigenous Coexistence in a More Than Human World

Soren C. LarsenJay T. Johnson

Published in print: 2017-10-18

Being Together in Place explores the landscapes that convene Native and non-Native people into sustained and difficult negotiations over their radically different interests. Using ethnographic research and a geographic perspective, this book shows activists in three sites learning how to articulate and defend their intrinsic and life-supportive ways of being—particularly to those who are intent on damaging these places.

Offering powerful new ways of thinking about our cities, Shannon Mattern goes far beyond the historical concepts of origins, development, revolutions, and the accomplishments of an elite few. Her ...
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Offering powerful new ways of thinking about our cities, Shannon Mattern goes far beyond the historical concepts of origins, development, revolutions, and the accomplishments of an elite few. Her vivid prose leads readers through a historically and geographically broad range of stories and takes media archaeology to the city’s streets, revealing new ways to write our urban, media, and cultural histories.Less

Code and Clay, Data and Dirt : Five Thousand Years of Urban Media

Shannon Mattern

Published in print: 2017-10-20

Offering powerful new ways of thinking about our cities, Shannon Mattern goes far beyond the historical concepts of origins, development, revolutions, and the accomplishments of an elite few. Her vivid prose leads readers through a historically and geographically broad range of stories and takes media archaeology to the city’s streets, revealing new ways to write our urban, media, and cultural histories.

In The Construction of Equality, Jennifer Mack shows how Syriac-instigated architectural projects and spatial practices have altered the Swedish city’s built environment “from below.” Combining ...
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In The Construction of Equality, Jennifer Mack shows how Syriac-instigated architectural projects and spatial practices have altered the Swedish city’s built environment “from below.” Combining architectural, urban, and ethnographic tools through archival research, site work, participant observation, and interviews, Mack provides a unique take on urban development, social change, and the immigrant experience in Europe over a fifty-year period.Less

The Construction of Equality : Syriac Immigration and the Swedish City

Jennifer Mack

Published in print: 2017-10-11

In The Construction of Equality, Jennifer Mack shows how Syriac-instigated architectural projects and spatial practices have altered the Swedish city’s built environment “from below.” Combining architectural, urban, and ethnographic tools through archival research, site work, participant observation, and interviews, Mack provides a unique take on urban development, social change, and the immigrant experience in Europe over a fifty-year period.

The Japanese passion for the game of baseball stretches back over one hundred years, and has its origins in the Meiji period. Baseball has long been Japan’s national pastime, and the game constitutes ...
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The Japanese passion for the game of baseball stretches back over one hundred years, and has its origins in the Meiji period. Baseball has long been Japan’s national pastime, and the game constitutes an important part of the social fabric of Japan. Moreover, baseball occupies a prominent position in modern Japanese culture. Starting with Masaoka Shiki’s poetry and fiction about baseball in the Meiji era and continuing all the way up to the recent baseball manga of Adachi Mitsuru, this work chronicles cultural representations of baseball in Japan with chapters devoted to poetry, fiction, manga and films that incorporate or represent baseball. The book makes the case that in Japan baseball has been used by writers, filmmakers and artists both to validate the time-honored model of Bushidō-inspired “Samurai baseball” and to challenge rigid cultural values and assumptions. Baseball has served in the modern era as a cultural touchstone to which artists have returned again and again.
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Contesting the Myths of Samurai Baseball : Cultural Representations of Japan's National Pastime

Christopher T. Keaveney

Published in print: 2018-07-01

The Japanese passion for the game of baseball stretches back over one hundred years, and has its origins in the Meiji period. Baseball has long been Japan’s national pastime, and the game constitutes an important part of the social fabric of Japan. Moreover, baseball occupies a prominent position in modern Japanese culture. Starting with Masaoka Shiki’s poetry and fiction about baseball in the Meiji era and continuing all the way up to the recent baseball manga of Adachi Mitsuru, this work chronicles cultural representations of baseball in Japan with chapters devoted to poetry, fiction, manga and films that incorporate or represent baseball. The book makes the case that in Japan baseball has been used by writers, filmmakers and artists both to validate the time-honored model of Bushidō-inspired “Samurai baseball” and to challenge rigid cultural values and assumptions. Baseball has served in the modern era as a cultural touchstone to which artists have returned again and again.

“Crime and the Chinese Dream” is edited by Børge Bakken. Although official propaganda emphasizes the Chinese Dream as the dream of all Chinese - a strong China with a prosperous population - but the ...
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“Crime and the Chinese Dream” is edited by Børge Bakken. Although official propaganda emphasizes the Chinese Dream as the dream of all Chinese - a strong China with a prosperous population - but the opportunities of achieving prosperity by legal means are distributed unequally. Crime and the Chinese Dream reveals how people on the margins of Chinese society find their way to the Chinese Dream through illegal or deviant behaviours. The case studies in this book include corrupt doctors in public hospitals in Beijing, fraudsters in a village called “cake uncles”, illegal motorcycle taxi drivers in Guangzhou, drug users being “re-educated” in detention centres, and alleged internet addicts who are treated as criminals by the system in boot camps under an unqualified and uncertified psychiatric regime. Despite the patriotic and collectivistic tint of the official dream metaphor, the contributors to this volume show that the Chinese Dream is essentially a state capitalist dream, which is embedded within the problems and opportunities of capitalism, as well as a dream of control where a vast number of people are excluded from achieving the official dream of prosperity.Less

Crime and the Chinese Dream

Published in print: 2018-04-01

“Crime and the Chinese Dream” is edited by Børge Bakken. Although official propaganda emphasizes the Chinese Dream as the dream of all Chinese - a strong China with a prosperous population - but the opportunities of achieving prosperity by legal means are distributed unequally. Crime and the Chinese Dream reveals how people on the margins of Chinese society find their way to the Chinese Dream through illegal or deviant behaviours. The case studies in this book include corrupt doctors in public hospitals in Beijing, fraudsters in a village called “cake uncles”, illegal motorcycle taxi drivers in Guangzhou, drug users being “re-educated” in detention centres, and alleged internet addicts who are treated as criminals by the system in boot camps under an unqualified and uncertified psychiatric regime. Despite the patriotic and collectivistic tint of the official dream metaphor, the contributors to this volume show that the Chinese Dream is essentially a state capitalist dream, which is embedded within the problems and opportunities of capitalism, as well as a dream of control where a vast number of people are excluded from achieving the official dream of prosperity.

Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir explores a black female dancer’s personal journey over four decades across three continents and numerous countries. The author situates herself in the 1960s Black Arts ...
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Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir explores a black female dancer’s personal journey over four decades across three continents and numerous countries. The author situates herself in the 1960s Black Arts Movement in the S.F. Bay Area, the dynamics of being a black woman dancing in Europe in the late 1960s, and dancing professionally in New York City in the early 1970s, while participating in racial inroads into important arts venues like Lincoln Center. She recounts friendships and collaborations with major artistic figures like Katherine Dunham, Ntozake Shange, Rod Rodgers, Diane McIntyre, Donald McKayle, Dr. Kwabena Nketia, and many others. She explores dancing in Ghana for almost a year, the inspiration for her return to the Oakland Bay Area in the late 1970s to help create the city’s black dance scene while being an adjunct dance lecturer at Stanford University. She also considers how her arts activism helped to engender more cultural equity in the arts nationally. She remembers the 1980s national multicultural arts movement and regional community dance activism, including her own national dance initiative, Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century. Finally, she ponders her self-reinvention in her 50s into a noted black studies and hip-hop scholar in academia.Less

Dancing in Blackness : A Memoir

Halifu Osumare

Published in print: 2018-03-06

Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir explores a black female dancer’s personal journey over four decades across three continents and numerous countries. The author situates herself in the 1960s Black Arts Movement in the S.F. Bay Area, the dynamics of being a black woman dancing in Europe in the late 1960s, and dancing professionally in New York City in the early 1970s, while participating in racial inroads into important arts venues like Lincoln Center. She recounts friendships and collaborations with major artistic figures like Katherine Dunham, Ntozake Shange, Rod Rodgers, Diane McIntyre, Donald McKayle, Dr. Kwabena Nketia, and many others. She explores dancing in Ghana for almost a year, the inspiration for her return to the Oakland Bay Area in the late 1970s to help create the city’s black dance scene while being an adjunct dance lecturer at Stanford University. She also considers how her arts activism helped to engender more cultural equity in the arts nationally. She remembers the 1980s national multicultural arts movement and regional community dance activism, including her own national dance initiative, Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century. Finally, she ponders her self-reinvention in her 50s into a noted black studies and hip-hop scholar in academia.

With the unprecedented number of foreign-born population, South Korea has tried to reinvent itself as a multicultural society, but the intense multiculturalism efforts have focused exclusively on ...
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With the unprecedented number of foreign-born population, South Korea has tried to reinvent itself as a multicultural society, but the intense multiculturalism efforts have focused exclusively on marriage immigrants. At the advent and height of South Korea’s eschewed multiculturalism, Elusive Belonging takes the readers to everyday lives of marriage immigrants in rural Korea where the projected image of a developed Korea which lured marriage immigrants and the gloomy reality of rural lives clashed. The intimate ethnographic account pays attention to emotional entanglements among Filipina wives, South Korean husbands, in-laws, and multicultural agents, with particular focus on such emotions as love, intimacy, anxiety, gratitude, and derision, which shape marriage immigrants’ fragmented citizenship and elusive sense of belonging to their new country. This investigation of the politics of belonging illuminates how marriage immigrants explore to mold a new identity in their new home, Korea.Less

Minjeong Kim

Published in print: 2018-04-30

With the unprecedented number of foreign-born population, South Korea has tried to reinvent itself as a multicultural society, but the intense multiculturalism efforts have focused exclusively on marriage immigrants. At the advent and height of South Korea’s eschewed multiculturalism, Elusive Belonging takes the readers to everyday lives of marriage immigrants in rural Korea where the projected image of a developed Korea which lured marriage immigrants and the gloomy reality of rural lives clashed. The intimate ethnographic account pays attention to emotional entanglements among Filipina wives, South Korean husbands, in-laws, and multicultural agents, with particular focus on such emotions as love, intimacy, anxiety, gratitude, and derision, which shape marriage immigrants’ fragmented citizenship and elusive sense of belonging to their new country. This investigation of the politics of belonging illuminates how marriage immigrants explore to mold a new identity in their new home, Korea.